JimmyJames wrote:But to point at another paragraph in my topic post, does anyone agree that another reason could be the ease and learning curve of the Campaign Editor itself. There is the architect and his tools. If he gets new tools and they are hard to figure out, chances are the person would go back to using his older tools or stop his work altogether. This might also run into why people in the Starcraft community are more successfully productive than the Warcraft community.

You're saying that nearly an entire community is unwilling to make campaigns because WorldEdit is "too hard to learn"?

Bullshit.

Do you remember when you learned StarEdit? Would you say it was a cakewalk? If so, you're probably lying. One does not open up a map editor and expect to learn all of its intricacies overnight. It takes time. WorldEdit certainly takes more time to learn than StarEdit, but that's because it has more things to learn than StarEdit. If you were to keep a list of what WorldEdit can do next to list of what StarEdit can do, you'd see that StarEdit has next to nothing, and in my perspective, that's nothing but a gift. But according to what you say, newer and better tools works out to be a disadvantage for the mapmaker because he's too used to his old tools. This is utterly false. If anything, it's your own emotional laziness.

Imagine you're a carpenter. You're sawing a log. Your saw has become quite dull, to the point where you need to put force in your movements. A co-worker suggests to you that you sharpen the blade, or get a newer one. You reply to him "I would, but I'm too busy sawing this log!" Not really related to learning an editor, but the concept of emotional laziness still applies. If you don't want to sharpen the blade, you are free to spend 5 minutes doing a 2 minute job. And if don't want to explore what WorldEdit has to offer, you are free to jump through hoops to get something simple done in StarEdit.

I'm not even arguing that it's worth your time to make a campaign using WorldEdit. I'm just saying that to reject a newer generation editor simply because it has more stuff in it is foolish. Implying that an entire community has done this is even more foolish.

You're saying that nearly an entire community is unwilling to make campaigns because WorldEdit is "too hard to learn"?I guess that's one way of phrasing what I said but again, I think of it as one of the three contributing factors why the Warcraft 3 community has failed to be proliferate.2: "Another reason" was people and their 'feature creep' ... getting too ambitious.3: "Another reason" was the flexibility of the Warcraft 3 story and how many people cannot connect with the base story given for the campaigns and the unit histories.

Do you remember when you learned StarEdit? Would you say it was a cakewalk? If so, you're probably lying... If you were to keep a list of what WorldEdit can do next to list of what StarEdit can do, you'd see that StarEdit has next to nothing, and in my perspective, that's nothing but a gift. But according to what you say, newer and better tools works out to be a disadvantage for the mapmaker because he's too used to his old tools. This is utterly false. If anything, it's your own emotional laziness.

Perhaps much of the WC3 community also has emotional laziness, then? I guess it's that just point that I wanted to get across. Everybody has their amounts of dedication and I have little and not enough to complete a map or campaign but what I did notice was that StarEdit paled in comparison to WorldEdit, as you said as I said in the topic post. I was able to work with StarEdit and work on and on repeatedly testing my own maps and fishing out the bugs but once it came to WorldEdit, I was intimidated too much to even go into testing something out. I tried searching through other people's maps only to be confused even more because I didn't know how to approach it or maybe I was searching the wrong maps.

Would you agree this would've happened to a lot of people that might have tried to make a campaign? In addition, it's tradition (SC) vs. modern (WC3) methods... so many new features to work with. There are some people who choose to accept change and others who aren't - like a generation willing to adapt to technology and others who just are willing to let others help them out. This is one of the three factors that knock out potential campaign makers.

This brings me to the subject I wanted people to discuss in here overall. Has the Campaign Standards of Today risen to a point where many people are unable to make complete a campaign? Blasphemy? Then... What are the Campaign Standards of Today? How much do people expect to get out from a campaign? How much do campaign makers think people expect to get out from a campaign? (Real amount vs. estimated amount) and what does this mean for the campaign community? Has the release of Starcraft, Warcraft or any other game increased the bar? More/less collaborations with others? More/less heaps of days or weeks or months to complete a full project? What is the least a campaign maker can get away with to have his/her campaign considered acceptable? Continue this topic in any way you want.

Last edited by JimmyJames on Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So far I have just read a bunch of pretentious descriptions and vague assumptions. In my experience, the community is very accepting of all sorts of styles that emphasize any number of qualities. Narrative, cinematic aspects, gameplay appeal, comedy, all of which are very important, but ultimately only as important as the person you are showing it too. Most people savor something different then another when playing a game. You can either try to find a balance, or, in my opinion, you should just work with your strengths. If your strength is voice acting and sound editing, go with that full force and make it the highlight of your campaign. If you have a good sense of humor, use that to your advantage and make that your focus.

Just the title of this post, 'campaign standards of today', makes me chuckle. I didn't realize there were high standards, or even standards. If YouTube has proved anything, its that people will watch/play what appeals to them, no matter how crappy someone else may think it is.

Good point Desler. I'd like to add though that the fishing bowl so to speak for SC1 campaign isn't that big anymore. Your style would have less people that follow that style. When SC2 hits the fishing bowl will be huge. There might be 50 people interested in that voice act heavy campaign now, but for SC2 it could easily be 50.000. You got a good point though.

Yeah, good point really: there's room for everything, and I believe most of us(myself included) were just describing our own preferences. Since the downloads are free, the hard drives can hold plenty of campaigns and the potential fanbase for SC2 is enormous, it's probably just a matter of "niche".

Desler wrote:Just the title of this post, 'campaign standards of today', makes me chuckle. I didn't realize there were high standards, or even standards. If YouTube has proved anything, its that people will watch/play what appeals to them, no matter how crappy someone else may think it is.

Would the thread be less pretentious if it were titled "Our Campaign Standards of Today"?

Desler wrote:So far I have just read a bunch of pretentious descriptions and vague assumptions. In my experience, the community is very accepting of all sorts of styles that emphasize any number of qualities. Narrative, cinematic aspects, gameplay appeal, comedy, all of which are very important, but ultimately only as important as the person you are showing it too. Most people savor something different then another when playing a game. You can either try to find a balance, or, in my opinion, you should just work with your strengths. If your strength is voice acting and sound editing, go with that full force and make it the highlight of your campaign. If you have a good sense of humor, use that to your advantage and make that your focus.

Just the title of this post, 'campaign standards of today', makes me chuckle. I didn't realize there were high standards, or even standards. If YouTube has proved anything, its that people will watch/play what appeals to them, no matter how crappy someone else may think it is.

Simple as that. Someone who doesn't like reading wont go see a foreign film, even if it's won more awards than the latest hit American movie. Just create what it is you want to. Someone who hates long drawn out story wont play an RPG as opposed to a fighting simulation. Standards are only created per individual.

JimmyJames, Gemini, not sure what to call you, haha, I'm used to Gemini_Kilik, check your PM's.

I believe that every campaign maker will have a standard, even self-imposed standards, attached to their contributions to the community.

While the community is accepting of virtually anything, there are, like with all tastes and preferences, those which will receive more favorable of a response than others (if trends are examined). The standards set forth are those of the target audience. And to say they do not have standards or expectations is naive. (Regardless of whether the campaign is free or not).

You haven't lived until you've edited 5,000 recorded .mp3's of dialogue!

The Oracle wrote:I believe that every campaign maker will have a standard, even self-imposed standards, attached to their contributions to the community.

While the community is accepting of virtually anything, there are, like with all tastes and preferences, those which will receive more favorable of a response than others (if trends are examined). The standards set forth are those of the target audience. And to say they do not have standards or expectations is naive. (Regardless of whether the campaign is free or not).

Well, this site was founded on standards, back in the day there were lots of campaigns but I didn't let everyone in the door. The reason I laugh at 'campaign standards of today' is that there really isn't much of a supply and demand chain. Virtually no campaigns left, and virtually no one left to play them. So 'campaign standards of today' is just hilarious in that regard.

Yeah, the mini-campaign contest pretty much just tries to bring back a little bit of the spirit of the past by offering incentives. You won't see the true spirit of the campaign community until SC2 hits. The selfless and endless spirit of creation shall thrive again.

For instance, I've never even waited for Zeratul and Artanis to complete 'working in the temple'. I'm not much of a cheater, but this is when I start doing it.

I really like the 'holdout' missions where you could actually go out and wipe-out the attackers and win that way (I think the ONE mission in Wanderers of Sorceria where you have to defend you can just take out the main building of each of the three attack bases and that will qualify enough as 'defeating' that army, but I also put a super-Hero in each base to make it more interesting).

The infamous 'wait for the dropships' mission I played it the way it was meant to be played the first time, but the second time I actually took a squad of marines and wiped out all the Zerg bases. No end-of-the-level Zerg rush or anything.

Having to learn all the new shit in WarEdit with WCIII was a daunting task, but the real reason I didn't make a campaign for it was because I had simply lost interest in the story and setting of WarCraft.